Paul Frederic Bowles, born December 30, 1910, in New York City, was
the only child of Claude Dietz and Rena Winnewisser Bowles. Bowles began
writing short stories and composing music as a child, and he was only a
teenager when his surrealist poetry was published in the magazine
Transition. Bowles
briefly attended the University of Virginia but dropped out in 1929 and moved
to Paris where he met and became friends with Gertrude Stein. This began over
forty years of nearly constant traveling for Bowles, who once said of himself
that he was addicted to movement. He returned to the University of Virginia in
the spring of 1930, but left again after one semester to study music, first
under Aaron Copland in Berlin (1930-32) and then with Virgil Thomson in Paris
(1933-34). During these years he also made his first visit, at Stein's
suggestion, to Tangier, Morocco. In 1937, Bowles met author and playwright Jane
Auer; they were married the following year. The Bowleses eventually settled in
Tangier, although both traveled often throughout North Africa, Europe, Latin
America, and the United States. At one point Paul even owned Taprobane, an
island off the coast of Sri Lanka.

Paul Bowles became a celebrated composer during the 1940s, providing
the musical scores for such noted plays as
My Heart's in the Highlands
(1940),
South Pacific (1943),
and
The Glass Menagerie
(1945). He also composed a number of scores for ballets, including
Yankee Clipper. At the
same time, Bowles wrote travel books on America, Mexico, France, India, and
North Africa. From 1942-45, he worked as a music critic for the
New York Herald-Tribune.
He made translations from French and Spanish for
View, and his
translation of Jean-Paul Sartre's
Huis Clos was published
as
No Exit in 1946. After
reading his wife's
Two Serious Ladies
(1943), Bowles was inspired to write fiction. He contributed short stories to
Harper's Bazaar, View, Mademoiselle, and
Partisan Review.
Bowles's first novel,
The Sheltering Sky
(1949), was a best-seller, and it remains his most critically acclaimed
work. Over the next decade, Bowles wrote three more novels and developed a
reputation as an existential novelist.

In 1956, he began translating Moroccan literature. In the 1960s and
1970s, Bowles primarily translated Moghrebi novels, short stories, and folk
tales in collaboration with Mohammed Mrabet. He also returned to writing
poetry. In 1970, he founded the literary magazine
Antaeus with Daniel
Halpern.

Jane Bowles's mental and physical health deteriorated after she
suffered a stroke in 1957, and she spent the final years of her life in a
hospital in Spain before dying in 1973. During those years, Paul Bowles ceased
to write fiction. In the years since his wife's death, Paul Bowles has remained
in Morocco; he received two NEH fellowships and began writing fiction and
composing again. Bowles died in Tangier on November 19, 1999. More information
about Paul Bowles may be found in his autobiography
Without Stopping
(Putnam, 1972).

Handwritten and typed drafts of short stories, essays, and
novels, correspondence, and musical compositions make up the bulk of the Paul
Bowles Collection, 1897-1995. The collection is organized into four series:
Series I. Works, 1923-1976 (6 document cases and 5 oversize boxes); Series II.
Correspondence, 1897-1995 (3 boxes); Series III. Personal Papers, 1942-1958 (1
box); and Series IV. Works by other Authors, 1935-1991 (1 box). This collection
was previously accessible through a card catalog, but has been re-cataloged as
part of a retrospective conversion project.

The Works Series is divided into literary and musical works. Among the
literary works are a number of notebooks with drafts of numerous short stories
and essays in them, as well as three typescripts of
The Sheltering Sky, and
several fables and stories translated by Bowles, including
"A Hundred Camels in the
Courtyard,""M'hashish," and
"The Hyena." Musical
materials include several sonatas for various instruments, Congo, the Picnic
Cantata, and music written to accompany works by Jane Bowles and Tennessee
Williams. Both the translation of Federico Lorca's
Yerma which Bowles
adapted as the libretto for an opera, and the musical score for this opera are
also present. All works are listed by title in the Index of Literary Works and
Index of Musical Works at the end of this finding aid.

The Correspondence Series, made up of mostly personal communications,
is organized into three subseries: Subseries A. Outgoing Correspondence,
1931-1995; Subseries B. Incoming Correspondence, 1928-1969; and Subseries C.
Third-party Correspondence, 1897-1967. Outgoing correspondence includes letters
from Bowles to family, friends, and acquaintances, Jane Bowles, James Purdy,
Tennessee Williams, and others. Incoming Correspondence includes letters from
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Alan Sillitoe, Virgil
Thomson, as well as others. Third-party correspondence is made up of letters
between people associated with Bowles, and generally regarding him or his work.
Also included in this subseries is a letter, dated 1897, to Edward Green from
his Petersham, Massachusetts parish, accepting his resignation. All
correspondents are listed in the Index of Correspondence at the end of this
finding aid.

The small Personal Papers series contains financial papers, including
bank statements, cancelled checks, and income tax returns, a few legal
documents, including identity papers and memoranda of agreement, as well as
assorted notes and lists.

The Works by other Authors Series contains holograph and typescript
manuscripts by Andreas Brown, Oliver Evans, Charles Henri Ford, as well as
other friends and acquaintances of Bowles. All authors and titles are listed in
the Index of Works by other Authors at the end of this finding aid.

Elsewhere in the Ransom Center are a number of books and music scores
from Paul Bowles personal library, recordings of Bowles's music, and ten
Vertical Files of printed works by Bowles containing critical commentary of
Bowles's literary and musical work, newspaper clippings, theatre programs, book
jackets, and other items associated with Bowles's work and career. The Literary
Files of the Photography Collection hold over 500 photographs of and by Bowles,
his family, friends, and landscape images. Of particular note is the
rediscovered music for the
Glass Menagerie, located
in the Audrey Wood Collection.

Other materials associated with Bowles are located at the Ransom Center in the collection
of Jane Bowles's biographer, Millicent Dillon, and the following
collections: